The Anti-Democratic Nature of Liberalism

[danny la rouge]

Pleasingly few names on the petition, though. Maybe nobody thinks they're competent to add their name.

 

[ska invita]

another example for the thread today - Matthew D'ancona Brexit is putting me off this whole ‘will of the people’ idea | Matthew d’Ancona

im not sure though how much this has to do with Liberalism. Its seems much more a class thing, a certain type of arrogant middle/upper class people who fear and distrust the opinions of those below them. I don't see a direct causal connection with liberalism, though clearly there will be a big overlap between the ideology and that class.

I hated the Brexit campaign and the way it was run, but i did enjoy the fact there was a referendum and the tiny sense of empowerment that brought. Id love to see a Swiss model here in the UK

 

[Pickman's model]

Pleasingly few names on the petition, though. Maybe nobody thinks they're competent to add their name.

still at 10.

 

[redsquirrel]

Very nasty piece in the Guardian today by two professor's of government at Harvard.

Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine.

Lovely, the actual coup against Chavez (or Erdogan for that matter) are ignored and instead he becomes the subverter of democracy.

An essential test for democracies is not whether such figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place – by keeping them off mainstream party tickets, refusing to endorse or align with them and, when necessary, making common cause with rivals in support of democratic candidates.

These two norms undergirded American democracy for most of the 20th century. Leaders of the two major parties accepted one another as legitimate and resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage. Norms of toleration and restraint served as the soft guardrails of American democracy, helping it avoid the kind of partisan fight to the death that has destroyed democracies elsewhere in the world, including Europe in the 1930s and South America in the 1960s and 1970s.

Strange I thought it was the US support of dictators that destroyed democracies in Latin America.

 

[butchersapron]

Great another Assad lover.

It's ok - he's dead now.

 

[Ralph Llama]

Chomsky on the middle classes and it having its head up it's own identity while the shit hit's the fan.

The Democrats long ago gave up on the working class, that’s not part of their constituency[, which these days is] an elite, professional constituency. They focus on — to the extent that they’re issues — mostly identity politics, which is okay, but it’s not class-based. It’s not going to appeal to the needs of most of the population. Other Republicans have just taken over the vacuum.

What the Sanders campaign ought to be doing is trying to get some counterpart to what used to be the labour-based mass movements. Go back to the 1930s. There were mass movements, but they was largely labour-based: the Communist Party and the Socialist Party and other political organisations that were not just organisations which show up every four years and push a button. They were membership-based, activist organisations. That’s pretty much missing now.

There are an awful lot of people involved [in activism], but it’s very atomised; either you’re doing gay rights or you’re doing environment or you’re doing local agriculture — all fine, but highly atomised and not taking either political power or mass popular organisation, both of which ought to be done and could be done… I think there are things happening, but it should be done on a much bigger scale.

 

[Brownglass]

Which will be reduced to rule by plebs

Put your claws away sweetheart!

 

[danny la rouge]

Put your claws away sweetheart!

What?

I'm coming across post after post by you, and they all seem like out of context interjections. Like the bloke in the seat in front of you on the bus who turns round and says something irrelevant about the conversation you're having with your mate.

Do you know what the thread is about? Do you know what Pickman's model meant by his remark? Do you agree or disagree? What was the point of your weird contribution here?